Obama’s Record on Chemical Safety Criticized After Blast

U.S. President Barack Obama bows his head at a memorial service held on April 25, 2013 in Waco, Texas. The memorial service honored the volunteer firefighters that lost their lives at the fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas. Photographer: Erich Schlegel/Getty Images

May 7 (Bloomberg) -- Five years after Congress mandated
that sales of ammonium nitrate, the chemical implicated in last
month’s fatal Texas blast, be tracked, rules to do that haven’t
been issued by the federal government.

Six years after federal investigators pleaded with the
Occupational Safety & Health Administration to curb combustible
dust in factories, the rules remain a work in progress.

For advocates of safety and security of chemicals, the
failure of the administration of President Barack Obama to issue
these and other chemical-safety standards represents a failure
to live up to his campaign promises.

“What worries me is that there are some really significant
risks that are just not being addressed by anybody, either the
industries or the administration,” said Michael Wright,
director of health and safety at the United Steelworkers union,
who rates as “poor” the administration’s efforts. “So far no
referee has stepped up to the plate.”

The explosion of a fertilizer-plant in West, Texas, on
April 17, which killed at least 14 and caused more than $100
million in property damage, has fueled a national debate over
the adequacy of chemical-safety laws and regulations.

“Chemical plant safety is a priority and when it comes to
complex safety rules, it is critical to get them right,”
Jessica Santillo, a spokeswoman for the White House’s Office of
Management and Budget, which reviews regulations, said in an e-mail.

Candidate Obama

Ensuring the security and safety of chemicals was a
priority of Obama during his tenure in the Senate, as he warned
that an industrial accident or terrorist attack at a refinery,
water-treatment facility or chemical plant could cause
widespread casualties.

“Basically these plants are stationary weapons of mass
destruction spread all across the country,” Obama said in March
2006. “Their security is light, their facilities are easily
entered, and their contents are deadly.”

As a candidate for president, Obama promised in 2008 to
“secure our chemical plants by setting a clear set of federal
regulations that all plants must follow.” Just days before the
election he mentioned it as an example of where government
regulation is needed, despite industry pressure.

Industry Resistance

“Well, I think it’s a classic example of special interests
lobbying,” Obama told MSNBC television. “There has been
resistance from the chemical industry.”

Since taking office, his administration hasn’t pressed
ahead with the regulatory efforts he had advocated. Industry
lobbyists have made the case that the proposed rules will harm
companies and cost jobs, an argument that Lisa Heinzerling, a
Georgetown University law professor, said is carrying the day.

Because the costs are widespread, and the risks -- while
potentially catastrophic -- are limited, the administration’s
cost-benefit analysis may not favor these types of rules,
Heinzerling, a former aide at the Environmental Protection
Agency under Obama, said in an interview.

“It’s never easy to persuade them to take on industry,”
she said. “There is something about this category of regulation
that is not congenial to their agenda.”

Not all regulations have been slow-moving under Obama.

Costly Rules

After a legal settlement in 2009, the EPA issued new
restrictions on mercury and other toxic emissions from power
plants at the end of 2011. It was one of the most costly rules
ever issued by the agency, and was followed a year later by
similar standards for cement plants, industrial boilers and
waste incinerators. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,
created in 2010, has already issued a dozen rules this year.

OSHA has finalized one chemical rule, modifying what
chemical hazards companies must disclose to comply with a system
set up under the United Nations.

The explosion of the Adair Grain Inc. facility in Texas
left a crater 93 feet (28 meters) wide by 10 feet (3 meters)
deep and represents the deadliest U.S. industrial accident in
three years. While investigators haven’t said what caused the
blast, the plant was approved to store 270 tons of ammonium
nitrate.

Under existing rules of the Homeland Security department,
companies are mandated to disclose large-scale stores of the
explosive. None of the pending rules critics are complaining
about would have had a specific impact on the Texas catastrophe.

90 Facilities

The U.S. has about 90 facilities -- including chemical
factories, refineries and water-treatment plants -- that
potentially pose a risk to more than 1 million people, according
to a Congressional Research Service report in November that
analyzed reports submitted to the EPA.

About 400 other facilities could pose risks to more than
100,000 people, according to the report. The calculations were
based on a “worst-case release scenario” such as an explosion
or leak, and the proximity of the plant to population centers.

The AFL-CIO labor federation today released its annual
Death on the Job report, compiling Labor Department statistics
to show that 4,693 workers were killed on the job in 2011. After
years of steady decline, the number of workplace fatalities and
injuries has “essentially been unchanged” for the past three
years, the report said.

Timothy McVeigh

Since Timothy McVeigh destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah
Federal building in Oklahoma City 18 years ago with a truck full
of ammonium nitrate, security advocates and lawmakers have
pressed for greater regulation of the sale of the product, which
is used as a fertilizer and industrial explosive.

It took a decade for Congress to endorse the recommendation
in a measure that became law in 2008 mandating the Department of
Homeland Security to regulate the sales.

Under President George W. Bush, the department issued a
pre-proposal of a rule, called an advanced notice of proposed
rulemaking. Three years later Obama’s department issued its
proposal, which would mandate that ammonium nitrate retailers
register, and then that they verify and keep records of each
sale of ammonium nitrate of more than 25 pounds.

Fertilizer Institute

That proposal garnered more than 100 public comments, most
of them critical of that plan, urging that it be scaled back.

“Individual members anticipate that, as currently
proposed, the program will impose a high economic cost on their
facilities’ day-to-day operations, which ultimately will require
them to transfer those costs to agricultural producers,” the
Fertilizer Institute, a Washington-based industry advocacy
group, said in its comments in 2011.

The Homeland Security agency is still working on the final
rule. It’s listed under “long-term actions” on the
department’s regulatory agenda.

“DHS is committed to continuing to work with private
industry and other stakeholders in our efforts to secure
potentially dangerous chemicals, including ammonium nitrate, to
ensure those chemicals do not fall into the hands of those who
could cause harm, while still facilitating legitimate use,”
Peter Boogaard, a department spokesman, said in an e-mail.

Silica Risks

Another rule that has languished concerns crystalline
silica, which is found in sand, stone, rock, concrete, brick,
block, and mortar. It is encountered by workers doing masonry,
sand-blasting, mining and glass manufacturing, according to
OSHA. Inhalation of the tiny sand particles can cause silicosis,
a disease of the lungs that has no cure.

The government set exposure limits in the 1970s, and hasn’t
adjusted it since then. After years of delay, OSHA began a
review of the health effects of silica in early 2009, and sent
its initial proposal about how to cut the mandated limits to the
White House Office of Management in Budget on Feb. 12, 2011.

Those OMB reviews are mandated by executive order to last
90 days. The proposal has been at OMB for more than two years.

“We have been trying to get the proposal released,” said
Peg Seminario, director of occupational safety at the AFL-CIO
labor federation in Washington, said in an interview. OMB
officials “tell us it’s complicated. We don’t think it’s that
complicated.”

Jesse Lawder, a spokesman for the Department of Labor,
didn’t respond to e-mail and telephone requests for comment.

Following three industrial explosions at plants caused by
combustible dust, the Chemical Safety Board, an independent
agency that investigates accidents, issued a report in 2006
calling for a new OSHA standard to prevent those fires or
explosions. After the Imperial Sugar plant in Port Wentworth,
Georgia exploded in 2008 and killed 14 people, the independent
board renewed its plea to OSHA to “proceed expeditiously” on
the 2006 recommendation.

So far, no proposal has been issued by OSHA, which says it
is working on the “pre-rule.”

“They are out there, just waiting to blow up,” Eric
Frumin, safety advocate for the labor group Change to Win, said
in an interview.